Today I start a new feature in the Plympton scrapbook – my new book “Sloppy Seconds” is just now hitting the bookstores, and is available on the internet at Plympmart and I’ll be featuring cartoons from the book in future editions of the Scrapbook.

Some of my books are published by the big publishers, like Doubleday and NBM, and some are self-published. When you’re published by the big boys, you get much better publicity and better distribution. (watch for the new graphic novel of my upcoming feature film “Hair High” published by NBM – it should hit the stores soon.) Conversely, when I self-publish a book, which I’ve done 3 times, the book stays in print longer and I make more money. Also, I have total creative freedom.

The title of “Sloppy Seconds” is actually very meaningful, it’s not just a sexual come-on. After self-publishing 2 collections of my gag cartoons (“The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton” and “We Eat Tonight!”), my stock of old unpublished cartoons was not so large – so it was time to bring out the bottom-of-the-barrel cartoons. But that’s not necessarily bad, for numerous reasons.

These cartoons were not published before for some reason – they were badly drawn, not funny, too weird, too outrageous, or just didn’t fit into any category. So, it’s a real potpourri of cartoons, yet I think it’s fascinating and educational to see these cartoons together.

The first one I want to display is the cover – I created it after SVA art school. I think it came from a dream – a weird hippie madman sitting in a huge Art Nouveau chair – of course, the wild contrast is the source of humor in the gag, but also the design motif of the chair makes it look like his brain is emanating a wild psychedelic trip.

This is the height of my rapidograph cross-hatching style. You can see I really got into the technique back then. Of course, for animation this style would severely slow down my output of films.

Be sure to check out next week’s weird cartoon on Plympton Scrapbook.

See you all next week,
Bill Plympton